Sunday, February 27, 2005

This is the ultimate in free and ultimate in open. Because it means anyone, ANYONE, who is willing to help out can move through the hierarchy of decision making. You can do almost anything b/c you do the work and people trust and rely on you.This is what open source governance has always been. No one really speaks of it much b/c we like to think open == democratic. It doesn't. Open means unlimited social mobility. No glass ceilings.

This really isn't "the ultimate" in free and open-- it's what it free and open were supposed to be all along. Anyone who has any delusions about FOSS being a democracy or coming about as a result of some democratic process is foolishly mistaken. Ever since day one of GNU and then Linus' famous posting, the process has never been democratic. If it were, then everyone under the sun would be afforded a voice and say in every decision.

The model of buying in by contributing something useful is the way it's been, and the only way it should ever be. That really is the only way to get a good signal to noise ratio. It's been a Meritocracy all along, and that's the way it should stay.

Great to be back in New York, albeit only for a few days, I got out of the Syracuse snow, which I hear hasn't stopped. Anyway, went to see Constantine last night with the crew. I felt the need to post a review and some comments. Overall I think the movie was decent. Being somewhat of a HellBlazer fan, the thing that annoyed me most was that they Americanized John Constantine, blasphemy I tell you. After the first or second scene though, Keanu was playing the part really well, so I was less annoyed about the Americanization.

Overall the acting was pretty damn good I must say. I was surprised to see some people in the movie, most notably Gavin Rossdale as Balthazar and Shia Lebouf. I think it might have been a good idea to consider Gavin for the part of John, but what's done is done. Shia Lebouf also plays his part really well. For those unfamiliar with Shia Lebouf, he was a pre-teen star doing Disney Channel shows and movies. I had always said he had talent, nonetheless, and last night proved that to me. He was pretty damn good. I was also surprised to see Rachel Weisz's performance. I've liked her acting and she was freakin awesome in Confidence as well, and she did not disappoint this time.

So the acting was really really good. What was bad about the movie? For starters, the characters were botched a bit. I think they should have spent more time on character development, it would have suited them well. Second, they played with the plot obviously and changed some things and added other. I don't want to mention them here, because I don't want to ruin the movie for others.

My review in a sentence: Really good acting and cinematography saves what could have been a better developed screenplay. The effects kicked ass too. Ok, I lied. Two sentences. I would still suggest that anyone who liked HellBlazer, likes comic book films and just Film Noir in general go watch it. I think people who are unfamiliar with the original HellBlazer story will give it a higher rating than my B-.

P.S. I think the best character in the whole movie was Papa Midnight. It was superb.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Okay, so here's the status log. I didn't have any time to post the last few weeks because we were planning and putting on LinuxWorld and FUDCon. Anyway, everything went off fantastic. I got to Boston on Sunday, met Byte, Nasrat and PJones. Then we did something and I finally got to Joe's and settled in. Joe kicks ass man, I wish I had more time to chill with him, but his asshole professor gave him a test which he was studying for all week.

Monday saw us getting to Hynes and fixing up the booth. Drove to Westford and saw everyone's cubes and met everyone under the sun. Tuesday was Day 1 of LinuxWorld and thus began the whirlwind that was the week. Most popular booth question: "How did you fit it all on one CD?" Everything went well on Tuesday and Wednesday and then we had our meetings on Thursday which I got stuck not attending because I had to man booth. I'm not bitter though, its all in a day's work. Luckily, I had Dennis G. and some other random folks including Fin and Jeremy from LQ to keep me company in the booth. I also spent Thursday morning trying to get VoIP working and once it finally did work, (Thanks to Mark and crew @ Digium) no one wanted to use it. Got some Oreilly books that I divied up once I got back to Syracuse.

Friday was FUDCon. It kicked ass. First question of the day when I came to set up was "Where is Havoc Pennington, I need to speak to him." Some guy came at 7:30 just to see you Havoc!! Overall, everything went smoother than expected and it was a blast. We had some issues with the streaming which were worked out and thanks to Thomas for Flumotion. It kicks ass and I am going to present it to the Syracuse University Board as a solution for doing recording and streaming of classes. Some people I have spoken to already love it, they were skeptical of doing it with WMV and faced some resistance. Anyway FUDCon went well, we gave out lots of shirts and have some really nice sessions and actually got some work with regards to policy done. So overall things went surprisingly well, look for the rest of the slides and video of the sessions to go up to the website as soon as possible.

Got back to Syracuse, aka the great depression where it is always snowing, on Sunday and hurried to make up the school work. Which I am procrastinating from writing this blog entry.

There is a long list of people to thank so here goes:Michael Tiemann, Greg DeKoenisgberg, Colin Charles, Warren Togami, Seth Vidal, Tim Lee, Erik Logan, Everyone at Red Hat, Ender and yes even Eric Raymond who spoke at and made FUDCon possible--you know who guys are and listing you all would mean making this even longer than it is.The whole lot of people at BU who made everything possible. Thanks for your gracious hosting, catering and sponsoring of the event. Pam Andrews, Aaron Caine, Matt Miller, Paul Stauffer, Jeff Albro and everyone else.

The people that made LinuxWorld great as always when friends get together from far corners of the world. Jeremy, Fin, TrickyKid and all the LQ guys, Sam Ockman, Brian Aker, Pete Z, the romanian anti-virus company that not only makes Linux AV software but has the balls to give out condoms as a marketing ploy, the person that made the RH Red Sox jerseys, Marty Connor for throwing a party for the .orgs, the LTSP guys who helped us carry shit and loaned us a thin client for the booth and everyone else in the .ORG Pavilion who just made every second a memorable one.

Monday, February 21, 2005

I know I was too cheap to get you a card, so... Happy 30th birthday man. Thanks for everything over the years. For the hijinx at camp and dealing with us annoying "kids," for after-parties after the parties. For hangin out and doing cool shit. For Kathleen from Hazlet and opium. For Quinlan Nuggets, Quarter Drinks and always having enough TP for everyone's bungholio. For WWF and The Nature Boy-Wooooooooo. For Red Rico and having to put up with Mets, and now Red Sox fans. For Pearl Jam and all things music. And most of all for being around and being fucking cool about everything. Here's to the coolest old guy I know! Happy birthday and many more.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Well not much going on recently. The weather was nice over the weekend so I took it upon me to spend some time outside. It's never 50 in January in Syracuse, in fact it broke a record of 46 set in 1946. Other than that I haven't been blogging much just because I've been trying to get the all work out of the way before LinuxWorld and FUDCon. A few school items, writing papers and then finishing up some random loose ends at work with the new LAN upgrade. I've also been super busy resurrecting our school LUG which disappeared early last year.

At work while searching for some AirSnort drivers, I stumbled upon a very nice app for network analysis and packet capture in Windows. It's made by WildPackets and is called EtherPeek. A nice tool if you ever need to use something under Winblows. I'll stick to my Ethereal and Ettercap though.

That's all for now. Another update coming before I leave this weekend. Till then...